And Italy loves freedom. This war is a war made by her people. As of old her King and her diplomats go with them in this new Resorgimento. And the she-wolf must beware the trap. She needs the spirit again not only of her people and of Garibaldi and of Victor Emmanuel, but of Cavour. And she has it.
The cartoon suggests all the elements of the situation. The wolf ponders with turned head, half doubtful, half desperate. The poor little cub whimpers pitifully. The hunters dissemble their craft, the trap waits in the path ready to spring. It is not even concealed. Is that the irony of the artist, or is it only due to the necessity of making his meaning plain? Whichever it is, it is justified.
HERBERT WARREN
THE WOLF TRAP
“You would make me believe that I shall have my cub given back to me, but I know I shall have to fight for it.”
Ahasuerus II.
The legend of the Wandering Jew obsessed the imagination of the Middle Age. The tale, which an Armenian bishop first told at the Abbey of St. Albans, concerned a doorkeeper in the house of Pontius Pilate—or, as some say, a shoemaker in Jerusalem—who insulted Christ on His way to Calvary. He was told by Our Lord, “I will rest, but thou shalt go on till the Last Day.” Christendom saw the strange figure in many places—at Hamburg and Leipsic and Lubeck, at Moscow and Madrid, even at far Baghdad. Goodwives in the little mediæval cities, hastening homeward against the rising storm, saw a bent figure posting through the snow, with haggard face and burning eyes, carrying his load of penal immortality, and seeking in vain for “easeful death.” There is a profound metaphysic in such popular fancies. Good and evil are alike eternal. Arthur and Charlemagne and Ogier the Dane are only sleeping and will yet return to save their peoples; and the Wandering Jew staggers blindly through the ages, seeking the rest which he denied to his Lord.
In George Meredith’s “Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History” there is a famous passage on Napoleon. France, disillusioned at last,
“Perceives him fast to a harsher Tyrant bound;